I met Joe Whinney, the chief executive and founder of Theo Chocolate, last month here in Washington, and liked him right away–he’s an unpretentious high school dropout, with a great deal of enthusiasm for his work. It’s important work: Theo Chocolate is helping to alleviate poverty in one of the world’s most godforsaken places, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I wrote about Joe and Theo today for Guardian Sustainable Business. Here’s how my story begins:

Buying a Theo chocolate bar will not put a stop to the long-running conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But it will help, at least a little.

Seattle-based Theo sources cacao beans from war-torn eastern Congo and pays premium prices for them. By doing so, the chocolate maker provides a livelihood to about 2,000 farmers and indirect benefits to perhaps another 20,000 people in the Congo.

As a small company, with revenues of about $12m last year, Theo can only do so much. But its work in the Congo demonstrates how companies, big or small, can find ways to attack some of the world’s most intractable problems, if they have the will to do so.

“We’re trying to build a business that can change the way an entire industry conducts itself,” says Joe Whinney, Theo’s founder and CEO. His hope is that other chocolate companies invest in the livelihood of cacao farmers, as Theo has.

I hope you read the rest of the story. This is the second time this week that I’ve written about the DRC, where more than 5 million people have died in the past two decades; my previous story looked at Intel’s progress in eliminating conflict minerals from the Congo from its supply chain.

While I’m by no means an expert on the DRC, both stories suggest to me that businesses can play an important role in resolving conflicts and promoting economic development in even the poorest places in the world. NGOs like the Enough Project, which is working closely with Intel, the Eastern Congo Initiative, a group supported by the actor and activist Ben Affleck that is allied with Theo, are doing good work in the DRC, but it will take enlightened businesses like Intel and Theo Chocolate to provide sustainable livelihoods for people living there.

Theo’s work is especially impressive because of the way the company goes well beyond Fair Trade to support cacao farmers. It will be interesting to see if the world’s biggest chocolate companies follow this pioneering small one into the DRC.

By the way, I’m delighted that Joe Whinney will be joining us in May for the FORTUNE Brainstorm Green conference, about business and the environment.